


Equilux

by SnackerJack



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fae & Fairies, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:12:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnackerJack/pseuds/SnackerJack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fae may not be able to lie, but Stiles gives it his best shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**_The seasons are what a symphony ought to be:  four perfect movements in harmony with each other.  
_ ** _~Arthur Rubenstein_

Night coiled around the house on the hill.  The moon’s light, thin and pale against the star-spotted sky, allowed for only the softest highlights on the naked branches of the solid oak trees nearby.  The two inside the corner bedroom of the second floor paid no attention to the way that the darkness stretched out thick fingers to trace against the windows.  They were born in and of the night; they had nothing to fear from the world outside.

Anice Hale leaned back in the weathered rocking chair and smiled at her grandson.  Derek was small for his age, curled up under a thick comforter so that only his eyes, nose, and a wild tuft of dark hair peeped out.  The warm, yellow lamp-light illuminated the veins in her thin hands as she wove the yarn between her knitting needles. “What are the three most important things to remember about the Fair Folk, Derek?”

The blanket shifted as he ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “Don’t insult them, don’t accept their food or drink, and don’t fall in love.”

“Very good.  Do you know why?”

He considered this, bright gaze sliding away to land at the window and the silhouette of the oak tree beyond.  “They’ll get mad at you if you don’t follow their rules, and then they get you back.  Like Laura did yesterday.”  There was a distinct undertone of a pout.

Anice stifled a chuckle.  Derek had commandeered one of Laura’s favourite dolls and returned it after dropping it into a mud puddle.  Laura had screamed bloody murder, fangs sliding into place and her young features contorting as she picked up the soaked doll and beat her little brother around the head with it.  At only five years old, Derek was still too young to take up the change in self-defence.  After his mother had broken up the fight, he’d been forced to stay in the bathtub until all the mud had been scrubbed out from behind his ears.  Anice was fairly certain that he’d been more upset by the bath than the beating. 

“Yes, like Laura.  Only, sometimes the fae mean to really hurt you.  They might,” she leaned forward in her chair, locking her eyes with his, “even kill you if they think you disrespect them.  So, you should always treat them with respect, like you would talk to any adult.  And why don’t you accept anything to eat or drink from them?”

“Because it makes you more like them, and they can steal you.  They won’t ever let you come home.”

“Very good.  And you must be careful—they may try and trick you into eating something of theirs.  My cousin was invited to one of their grand parties once, when I was very young.  She drank from the wrong glass.  They switched it when she wasn’t looking, and so she could never come back home.”

Derek’s eyes went wide.  He tugged at the comforter until it covered his nose and wriggled against the pillows.  “Really?”

“Yes.  The fae are very dangerous and tricky.  You must learn to be that way as well, in case you ever meet one.”

“ _Will_ I meet one, Grandma?”

She nodded, tying off the end of her row. There was no reason to lie to the boy. “Probably.  They love unusual things, and our family is unusual enough.  Many of us have met them or seen them.” She smiled and reached forward to smooth his dark hair away from his face.  “They also love beautiful things, and I know already that you’re going to grow into a very handsome young man.”  Derek giggled, but his smile faded when she continued, “And that means that you must be very careful to never fall in love with a fae.”

“Why?”

Anice set aside the scarf and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, her joints creaking along with the bedframe.  “Because they are fickle creatures, Derek.  They don’t love as we do.  They live for so much longer than us mortals, and it’s very rare that they show interest and actually keep it.  They love fiercely, brightly, with all of their might and magic... and then they move on, and those that have loved a faerie in return will die of a broken heart.”

“They _die_?”  He whispered the last word and Anice felt a momentary twinge of regret for scaring him before she pushed it aside.  He had to understand the danger they posed.

“Yes.  If you give too much of yourself to a faerie, they keep that part of you when you leave, and your body can’t live without it.”  She stood.  “But you’re not going to worry about anything like that, because you’re a very smart young man and you know all the ways to avoid their traps and tricks.  Isn’t that right?”

The sheets rustled as he nodded.  “I’ll remember, I promise.  I’ll stay away from them.”

She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead.  “Good.  We all love you, Derek.  We’d much prefer it if you were safe and sound with us instead of with the fae where we can’t follow.”

“Even Laura?”

She smiled.  “Especially Laura.  Goodnight, Derek.”

“’Night, Grandma.”


	2. Spring

  
_**Falsehood is a perennial spring.** _   
_~Edmund Burke_

**_~*~_ **

_“We need to discuss your son.”_

_“We need do no such thing.”_

_“He’s walking the line, Peacekeeper.  He has no respect for our rules or traditions.  You cannot protect him forever.  If he keeps treading his own path, he will no longer be of the Blessed Court.  Would you truly see him cast out?”_

_“With all due respect, he is not your son.  He is my own blood and I trust him where you clearly do not. He’s smart; he knows precisely what’s at stake.  He will do nothing to endanger his position here with us.”_

_~*~_

The sun has barely graced the land with its presence when Stiles slips away.  He steals from the palace grounds, prepared with at least a dozen half-truths to use as excuses should anyone ask him where he is going.  He may not be able to lie, any false words burning to ash upon his tongue, but he is the best at misdirection in the court.  Among the fae, it’s quite the feat.  Stiles has always been of the opinion that sufficient planning can head off the need for misdirection at all.  It’s less an opinion and more along the lines of a skill learned after decades of missteps. 

He’s chosen his time well and he encounters no one as he creeps into the forest.  He follows the ley lines away from the Court grounds, feet passing soundlessly over the same paths the fae had been following for millennia. Mortals would have wondered at the sheer distance he covered on foot, but to Stiles, the passing of a dozen miles takes less than two minutes.  It’s one of the perks of his veins thrumming full of magic so soon after the equinox; he feeds some of the energy into the lines with barely a passing thought.

This has the additional benefit of a sort of magical feedback echoing ahead and behind, assuring him that he’s not being followed.  The sound rings clear in his mind and he takes a moment to send out an additional curl of magic that spreads to the east and west.  Some might call it paranoia.  Stiles will insist that it’s more along the lines of caution.  He’s been brought before the court for breaking their rules more than once, and he has no desire to repeat the process.  It’s humiliating, both for him and his father.

The sun is stretching over the horizon, buttery yellow light spreading along the mossy ground and catching on the new bark of the trees.  Early birdsong filters from high in the canopy.  No one waits for him.  Nothing watches.  Satisfied that he is, in fact, alone, Stiles reaches into the web of magic overlay and _pulls_.  Reality shifts, blurs.  He steps from one world to another in a smooth motion. {Well, technically he integrates himself more fully into the physical world, but that’s getting into magic theory and he could honestly care less about what the proper term is, only that it works.} 

The mortal realm closes around him, the colours muted from their usual brilliance and the sounds dimmed.  In exchange, his magic rises to just underneath his skin, creating the intoxicating flood of power that threatens to boil over at any moment.  The longer he dares to stay in the mortal world, the stronger the sensation will become.  He knows from experience that, so close to the vernal equinox, it will only be a small handful of hours until it’s physically uncomfortable. 

His arrival inside a stand of oak trees is otherwise unremarkable.  Stiles straightens out his simple green tunic, chosen because no matter what _some_ people think, he does know how to pass without notice.  If only it were as easy to do in the Realm as it is here.  He likes attention all right, but he hates being scrutinised, valued, and constantly coming up short.  It’s enough to get anyone down, even fae with indomitable spirits and incredible modesty such as himself.  Turning, he heads east, leaving the self-pity behind without a backward glance.  This isn’t the place or time.  He’s here for a reason, after all.

He moves through the trees with an acquired grace from centuries of practice, feeling the rush and tug of the energy roiling beneath the ground and in the trunks of the trees.  It washes over him and along his skin and a smile breaks across his face.  It may be dangerous to come to this world so often, but if it means he can feel like this, unstoppable and unbeholden to anyone, he might never stop.

Some five hundred yards later, he comes across an old fence, little more than rotting timber and stones, and turns to follow it north.  He moves faster now, one eye on the sun.  Very little time passes before he arrives at his destination.   The elm tree grows just on the far side of the fence, and it’s a simple matter to leap over and hoist himself into its willing boughs to wait.  The soles of his boots are supple and his clothes are made of thick, quality cloth, but he can still feel the slow twist of life under the protective bark.  Almost absentmindedly, he reaches out to brush a hand against the trunk, slips into the tree’s lengthened sense of time and allows the solidity of the wood to bolster his own spirit.  He could stay there happily for weeks, hiding from duties and the judgemental gazes of the fae, but he’s timed his arrival well, and it’s no time at all before his magic thrums with the alert of something fast approaching.

He startles {he is _not_ going to call it a flail, not even in his own head} and his magic flares in response, provoking the elm into producing two years growth in under two seconds.  Swearing as wood creaks in protest, he releases the trunk and instinctually throws up a belated shield to protect himself from sight and scent of the approaching mortal, and nearly topples off the branch as he does so.  A paragon of natural grace, he isn’t.  Footsteps sound clearly.  He presses himself flat against the tree and freezes as the mortal emerges from the brush perhaps twenty yards away.

All of this, the shields, the spells, the absolute stillness, is by all means entirely unnecessary.  If Stiles doesn’t want to be noticed here in this world, he won’t be.  Still... he tracks the movements as the mortal slows from a jog to a halt, peering around the forest with undisguised wariness.  If any mortal can bypass the spells and his natural camouflage, Stiles thinks, it would probably be this one.  This one... is different.

In the past two weeks, Stiles has done nothing but watch, captivated by a strong jaw and piercing hazel eyes, the way that physical power all but rolls off the compact form.  The man would appear, pace along the fence boundary, sit beneath the elm, and then leave the same way that he’d come.  This whole process could take anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour.  Today, today, the mortal barely begins to approach the old fence before jerking backward and settling into a ready stance.  Stiles tilts his head in confusion and freezes anew as those eyes train upon the elm.

Carefully, without moving so much as a muscle, he checks his magic and finds it thankfully in place, an added layer of protection.  Is it possible that the mortal had noticed the sudden, small changes in the tree’s appearance?  How though, when he was only--- oh.  _Oh_.  His eyes narrow, take in the contortions of the mortal’s facial planes, the smooth expanse of skin wrinkling and becoming sharper.  The fingernails thickening into claws.  The fangs.  _Lycanthrope_.

Intrigue takes a sharp turn into full-blown fascination.  The lycan takes a step back, then another, then turns and sprints away much faster than he’d come.  This is different, indeed.  Stiles quite likes ‘different’; it appeals to him on many levels, the most base of which is that he finds a certain kinship in ‘different’.  And so, never having been known for level-headed decisions, he follows.

A lycanthrope.  It’s been a century since he’s even seen one, and he’s never been this close before.  He descends the from the branches and darts from tree to tree, tugging on the magic overlays to match the brutal pace and give himself an extra burst of speed.  That caution-that-wasn’t-paranoia makes the slightest appearance, and he follows off the trail, just barely keeping the mortal in sight.  He’s never heard of a lycan biting a fae, but he’s also willing to bet that he doesn’t want to find out the consequences.

He judges that they’ve covered about two miles before the mortal slows to a jog as he approaches a massive husk of a house on a hill.  Without hesitation, the lycan trots up the steps, bounds across the creaky porch, and slams the front door behind him so hard the entire wreck should have fallen down.  There’s an unmistakeable click as a lock slides into place.

A chill presses against Stiles’s skin and he halts at the edge of the trees.  The sight of the house puts a damper on his enthusiasm. The faded paint and overgrown plants may speak of a home once lovingly maintained, but any good memories in this house are long gone.  The windows are broken, blackened with soot and filth.  Traces of rot show along the siding and the trim.   He finds that he doesn’t want to take a single step closer.

This is the point where he should give the whole thing up.  He knows this, knows that nothing good can come out of this, from a mortal lycanthrope who lives in a building full of misery and memory.  Instead, Stiles watches the figure inside pace back and forth through the remnants of the windows and wonders if the place is being held together by magic, or maybe sheer force of angry will.  Catching sight of the lycan, face returned to normal but scowling hard enough that any onlooker should have come to their senses and left, he thinks the latter is probably more likely. 

He probably would have stayed there all day, thrilling every time he caught sight of the mortal, had a small hand not clamped down on his shoulder with enough force to bruise.  Startling { _again_ , today is doing nothing for his ego}, he spins, ready to loose a bolt of energy.  Golden eyes meet brilliant green, and he lets the magic slide away into the natural overlays.  This isn’t someone he particularly wants to tangle with, even this close to the equinox.  _Especially_ this close to the vernal equinox.  “...Hello.”

“Don’t you ‘hello’ me.  What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” he shoots back as his mind scrambles to come up with a logical explanation.

Lydia, beautiful Lydia who manages to make Stiles feel vastly inferior with the rise of one perfect eyebrow, folds her arms.  “I was looking for the idiot who promised me that he would help prepare for the celebration tonight.” {She means that she intends to make him do all the heavy lifting.} “I seem to recall the same idiot promising the Peacekeeper of the Court that there would be no more excursions to the mortal realm.” {She means that she’d just added another item to her already-impressive pile of blackmail.}  “I thought I’d fetch the idiot back and show mercy by not stringing him up by his entrails like I very much wish to.”  {She means... well, that one is actually pretty straightforward.} 

A delicate foot, clothed in soft grey leather that wraps all the way to an equally dainty knee, taps against the dirt. The eyebrow rises higher.  “Have you seen an idiot like that around here?”

Lydia is a force of nature, all spark and snap and willpower wrapped in a lovely package.  She is everything a fae of the Seelie Court should be: honour and beauty and divine wrath and swift retribution.  Her only flaw, as far as many are concerned, is her bizarre insistence of counting Stiles among her closest friends.  Stiles, who skirts the edge of dishonour and uses magic too freely and is just this side of too willing to kill.  Stiles, who has never quite fit in amongst the rest of the Blessed Court, but has never committed transgression enough to disappear into the clutches of the Unseelie. 

Stiles himself had learned a long time ago to just accept the whirlwind that was Lydia, and he loves her fiercely.  She, more than anyone else, is his link to the rest of the Blessed Court. She keeps him grounded.  She is also the one who engages in and carries out long and detailed plots against everyone with him, and sticks her nose into all of his business and actually listens to him.  Stiles _worships_ her.

“I was going to come right back,” he says.  “I was!  I just—“

Green eyes, keen and sharp, track his gaze as movement in the house catches his attention once more.  “You were just _what_?”  There’s a brief scuffle as Stiles tries to distract her, and she quashes him with barely an effort.  Her entire demeanour changes instantly, one hand reaching for the knife strapped to her hip.  “Stiles, who is that?”

“I don’t know.”

She doesn’t allow her eyebrows to climb all the way to her hairline, presumably through sheer force of will.  “You don’t know.  You’re breaking no less than four rules just by being here, and you don’t even know who you’re risking everything for.”

“When you put it like that it sounds so terrible.”  Stiles gestures at the house and says the first thing that comes to mind.  “I know that he’s a lycan.  He _turned_ , right in front of me.”

On second thought, maybe he should have lead with something else.

He can practically see the storm clouds appear over her face.  He can also feel the undercurrents of energy vibrate as she pulls at the magic around them.  “And you followed him here?  Stiles, do you see nothing wrong with this?  You could get into so much trouble here that even your father couldn’t protect you.”  She raises a hand, pokes at his chest.  Her finger leaves a tiny scorch mark on his shirt.  “We’re leaving.  We’re leaving and you are going to do my share of the work today and you will bring me wine all night and be nice to Jackson, and I am going to forget that this ever happened.”

Stiles opens his mouth to say something {he isn’t sure what, but it will probably bring him nothing but trouble and _he can’t help himself_ }, and snaps it shut again as the front door of the house swings open and the lycan steps back outside.  Bereft of speech, something that hasn’t happened in the past age, he reaches out and takes his life in his hands by physically turning Lydia around to face the mortal.

There’s a long pause. 

“I see,” she says finally, and the prickling of her magic fades away.

The corner of Stiles’s mouth quirks upward.  The mortals have stories about fae being known for their love of beauty, and in this case the rumours contain substance. Wars have been fought over beautiful things, though that hasn’t happened in some time.  In the grand scheme of things, the fact that he’s been sneaking away for weeks to catch glimpses of this mortal no longer seems so important.

He has a very good reason.

The lycan paces.  Every step he takes resounds on the wooden planks of the porch, and he is solid and present in a way that Stiles or Lydia never can be in this world.  Usually, when Stiles watches him in the forest, he seems calm, almost sad.  Unguarded.  That was before.  Somehow, some way, this mortal had sensed Stiles.  By sight or sound or scent perhaps, although the spell should have shielded him from even a lycan’s heightened senses.  {Stiles is many things, but a sloppy user of magic is not one of them.}  Or, perhaps the mortal had sensed the presence of magic itself, although that shouldn’t have been possible either.

Either way, it’s clear that he’s on alert now.  His expression could be carved from granite, except for the way that his nostrils flare as he breathes deeply.  Smooth skin slides over muscles as he comes to a halt and crouches at the edge of the porch.  The movement belies the creature inside; perched there, unnaturally still, he might lunge at any moment.  Strong fingers curl over the edge of the boards.  And over everything, the piercing blue eyes rove, unnaturally bright.

“Fascinating,” Lydia murmurs.  She shifts, utterly silent, as if to step further out from behind the tree line.  They’re attuned enough to each other that Stiles recognises the instant she sends out a tendril of magic to examine the mortal’s aura. 

Apparently, so can the lycan.  A blue gaze fastens directly on the two fae, and teeth elongate in a snarl.  Lydia’s impeccable concentration falters in surprise, one of the only times Stiles has ever seen it do so, and the magic pulse dissipates into nothing.   Stiles reaches for her as the lycan half-stands, muscles coiled and ready to leap.  She’s taken aback enough that she twines their fingers together without threatening to break him in half.  “Stiles, what is he doing?”

“I don’t know—“ he strengthens his shield  on instinct and a growl rips from the lycan’s throat.  He’s faced down a lot of things during his misspent childhood in which he and Scott had gotten into a lot more trouble than was strictly advised.  He’s heard quite a few growl variations: snarls, roars, rumbles, grumbles, and even some noises that didn’t originate from Scott’s bottomless pit of a stomach.  He thinks himself pretty well inured against most growly things.  Not this one.  Low, so low it’s almost subsonic, vibrating low in his chest and sending adrenaline flooding his senses, it thrums against his skin and sets his nerves on edge.

In conjunction with the sharp edges of his magic, it’s almost more than he can bear.  His senses reel.

“I know that you’re there.  Leave.”

Without thinking, Stiles reaches out and  _pulls_ , slipping away and taking Lydia with him.  The world fizzes around the edges, solidifies and they’re back by the ley lines, blinking at each other in unabashed confusion. 

“How does he  _do_  that?” he demands, waving his hands in a ridiculous approximation of a circle.

“Maybe I could have found out if you hadn’t dragged me away,” Lydia snaps, reclaiming her hand and making a point of stretching out her fingers. Stiles ignores this; she’d been holding his hand just as tightly as he’d been holding hers.

“He knew where we were,” he says.  “He could tell when we were using magic.  He was  _growling_ at us.  What was I supposed to do?”

Lydia gives him the fish-eye and still manages to make it look good.  “Stiles.  We are fae of the Seelie Court.   _You_  are fae of the Seelie Court.  You could squish him like a bug before he could get anywhere near you.”

“I… didn’t think of that.”

“And that’s why you have me.”  She pats him on the shoulder, somehow managing to be both condescending and affectionate at the same time. “Come.  If you wish to  _stay_  a member of the Court, you’d better get to work. You can tell me how you found your mortal on the way back.” 

Resistance is, as always, futile.  “He’s not  _my_  mortal,” he grumbles anyway, because he is incapable of keeping his mouth shut.

He fills her in as they go, because he can’t deny Lydia anything and he’s been wanting to tell someone about it for weeks.  How he’d left early in the morning while everyone was recovering from the revelry during the equinox and wandered along the ley line, creating miniature explosions of gold and green to let off the rush of the returned magic until he grew bored.  How he’d weighed his options and considered all of the reasons why he shouldn’t sidle over into the mortal world ‘just to see how things were going’ before admitting to himself that he was going to go no matter what.

Some things just couldn’t be helped.

He tells her how he’d found the fence and followed it to an ancient elm, gnarled and twisted and thriving, and had climbed into the boughs on a whim.  How he’d conjured up an apple from his pack and never gotten to enjoy it because a mortal had come jogging through the forest with no shirt on and a ridiculously toned chest, and... well.  Given a choice between _that_ and an apple, Stiles had come very close to chucking the fruit aside altogether and doing something very, very stupid. 

The weeks of subsequent stalking hadn’t necessarily been a better alternative, but at least he’s been able to look. All in all, he thinks he’s done pretty well at the secret thing so far.  No one’s even batted an eyelash at his regular disappearances until today.  He’d had a _schedule_.

“So what changed?” Lydia asks.

They walk in silence for a moment, Stiles picking through his recollections of the hours he’s spent lurking in the trees just to get a glimpse of tanned skin and stubble.  To be completely fair, fae revealing themselves to mortals is growing more uncommon every year as the ancient traditions are lost with the passing of time.  The fae had once been held with great respect and now they are nothing more to most mortals than bedtime stories.  The thought makes Stiles feel very old, every single year of his several centuries.  He shakes the sense of weariness off.  This isn’t the time to go down that road.

“Magic,” he eventually says.  “I never used magic in front of him before today.  And he didn’t know for sure that we were out there until you sent the pulse toward him.  He must be able to sense our magic.”

Lydia hums, tapping a finger against her lower lip in thought.  “But why?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just something lycanthropes can do?  Or... maybe it’s something else.  Was he born with it?  Was... no, that’s not possible.”  He runs a hand through his hair.  “I want to research this.  Come on, we can still—“

“No.”  Lydia shakes her head.  “Not right now,” she adds, because she loves to read and learn everything just as much as Stiles does, and the thought of not knowing something rankles.  “We have to help your father and Jackson first, or they’re going to ask where you’ve been, and you’re going to have to tell the truth.  Besides,” she smiles, “You owe me for coming to get you so you didn’t let the whole day go by while you stared at your mortal.”

Stiles fumes, but only for a moment.  She has a point.  She always does.  But— “He isn’t my mortal!”

~*~

“Stiles,” Lydia says, whirling by in a green and gold blur, “would you mind?”

He plucks the goblet out of her hand because he is a good friend and a proponent of good alcohol, but more because he has no desire for all of his secrets to be spilled in front of the Court due to his failure to keep wine in her glass.  It’s happened before.  Nothing good came of it.

What they have here isn’t merely a party, but Stiles doesn’t want to call it a ball either.  A ball implies some sort of special event, and this sort of thing happens far too often to be called ‘special’.  A congregation, maybe, with nearly the entire Court in attendance and bedecked in gold and silk and velvets.  They’ve gathered in the open hall, a marble-floored space lined with ivy columns and open to the star-speckled sky.  Set partially aside from the dance floor, visible through the columns, are small alcoves in among the trees with tables and low couches.  These areas aren’t so well lit as the main floor, the faerie lights glittering in the leaves just brightly enough for the occupants to see each other clearly.

At the northern end of the hall sits the Queen, elegant and deadly, watching over her domain with a predatory gaze.  Her sharp eyes see everything, wanted or not.  Stiles makes brief eye contact with her as he waits for an attendant to refill Lydia’s goblet with the raspberry wine she’s so fond of.  It only lasts for the barest moment, but it still feels like she’s stripped him down and knows him more intimately than he does himself.

The music quickens and the dancers spin along with it, bright washes of colour against the marble columns.   Stiles skirts the edges of the dance floor in practiced motions, careful not to set a single foot onto the floor.  Dancing is not a skill in his considerable repertoire.  Lydia learned long ago not to try and press him into it.  He thinks too much about everything to pay attention to the complicated steps, where he should put his hands, the subtle changes in tempo.  Besides, the dances which require partner switches always end badly, because it isn’t like there’s a line of fae willing to dance with _him_.

He’s not bitter. Much.

“I’ll take that,” Jackson says, appearing out of absolutely nowhere and plucking the wine from Stiles’s hand.  A flick of his wrist sends the wine swirling, and he inhales the scent of it with feigned relief.  “At least you’re useful for _something_.”

“At least I don’t have to constantly prove it,” Stiles snaps, and Jackson’s face twists, reveals the ugly shard of anger before he closes it off.

“Fuck you,” he spits, and stalks ahead to their alcove, the back of his neck red even in this light.

Stiles thinks briefly about being offended, discards it because he’d won that round.  Jackson is easy enough to rile if you know where to poke, easy to fluster and easy to provoke into loss of temper. Stiles and Scott have a private theory that it’s because of his human blood, though neither of them have ever bothered to bring it up to Jackson.  Lydia has warned them both countless times that they aren’t to bother him under fear of pain, and they’ve known Lydia long enough to know when she’s being completely serious.

She’s waiting for them in the alcove with Danny, flushed and laughing, and whatever she sees on Jackson’s face wipes that away in an instant.  “Stiles,” she says, and he throws up his hands before dropping heavily onto the empty couch.

“I am _not_ apologizing.”

“We had a deal.”  Her face is thunderous, and if they had been anywhere else, he doesn’t doubt that she’d have already been yelling.

He shrugs expansively, flick his fingers and levitates his own wine glass just to let off some of the tension in his shoulders.  He hadn’t forgotten of course, how could he have when she’d reminded him of it all afternoon?  “You said our deal was not to provoke him.  You didn’t mention anything about retaliation if _he_ provoked _me_.”  He shot a glare to his left.  “Which he did.”  And as Jackson looked down and didn’t refute it, the glare turned into a smirk.  “I am clear of blame.”

Lydia turns her gaze to Jackson, and they hold gazes long enough for Stiles to lose interest and turn to search out Scott.  The sprite is out on the dance floor with Allison, both laughing as they spin with the music.  Allison wears crimson, Scott wears gold, they both wear smiles.  Stiles fights down a huff.  Sickening.

When he turns back to exchange an undignified eyeroll with Danny, Jackson is gone, sent out to fetch the tiny strawberry tarts that Stiles likes.  Lydia is still looking displeased, but at least her ire isn’t directed at him anymore.  Good, he thinks as his mind conjures up an image of the lycan, he’s going to need her help to unravel that mystery and it’s never pleasant when she’s angry.  He accepts the tarts from Jackson on his return and remains mostly quiet for the rest of the night, hearing that low growl rather than the bright conversation around him.

~*~

Nearly a week later finds Lydia striding down the hallway, head high and hair tumbling around her shoulders.   She’s looked everywhere else that he was likely to be, a task that had taken several hours, and this is her last resort.  The library doors loom in front of her, half open and spilling light from between the marble doors.  Her fingers twitch.  She’s going to haul him out by the scruff of his neck and tie him to a post by his hair and then _laugh_ at him for not keeping to their meeting time.

The plan is derailed somewhat when she catches sight of him, sequestered in a table under a window to catch the light pouring in.  Leather-bound books and scrolls scatter across the table in haphazard piles, the steady scratch of quill across parchment.  Sharp eyes flick from book to parchment as he scribbles something down and snatches for another book, sending an avalanche of papers to the floor.  He ignores it, already bent over the new text.

“How long have you been in here?”   Stiles doesn’t answer, and her eyes narrow.  Stiles loves to talk.  He talks about anything and everything, wraps his words in layers of sarcasm and nerves, serves them with a wide and frantic range of hand gestures.   Lydia has been with him long enough to know that, when asked a question and he simply ignores it, he’s resorting to the last thing that might help.  After all, a fae cannot lie, but if one remains silent, it cannot tell the truth, either.  For all his intelligence, Stiles doesn’t seem to realise that this ploy gives more away than it might even if he _had_ tried to say anything.  “That long?”

He tears his gaze away long enough to meet her eyes.  “Maybe.”

“Have you found anything new?”

He sighs, drops the quill and leans back to scrub at his face.  “No,” he grumbles.  “Plenty on lore and history and nothing about lycans and magic except that they can’t wield it.  There’s never been a documented case about a lycan being able to sense magic.  As far as I can tell, anyway.” He lowers his hands and slumps, pink-cheeked and mouth drawn tight in irritation.  Even then, he manages to be captivating, although Lydia would sooner die than admit to it.  “This would be so much easier if there was a way to catalogue all of this better.  This is taking forever.”

“You could always take a break,” she offers.  “Scott’s been looking for you.”

“No,” Stiles says.  “I’ve got a lot more to look up, and I don’t want to be distracted by ‘Allison did this’ or ‘Allison said that’.  Scott can wait.”  He picks up the quill and returns it to the ink pot.  “Besides, I haven’t gotten hauled in front of my father in the past couple of weeks, and believe it or not, it’s actually been pretty nice.  Scott is clearly dangerous to my well-being.”

Lydia laughs and stands.  Scott isn’t exactly the menace Stiles implies: if anything, Stiles is the diabolical mastermind and Scott is only guilty of being incapable of saying ‘no’.  “All right.  I’ll tell him you’re busy.  When will you be done?”

“When I find answers,” Stiles says, already buried back in the scrolls. 

She waits for more, but nothing comes.  As she heads back to the entrance, her thoughts whirl.  It has been a long time since she’s seen Stiles that invested in something.  Something serious, that is, because whatever hare-brained scheme he’d hatch with Scott always got his full attention too.  This, she thinks, isn’t even really the same as being invested.  She turns one last time.  Stiles’s face is focused; he looks older without the customary grin or the expansive gestures.  This borders on obsession.

A smile crosses her face.  A passing nymph not-so-surreptitiously sidles away.  Had Stiles seen it, he might have done the same, because there was no way that that smile meant anything but trouble.  Stiles only plots.  Lydia, flawless Lydia who is the darling of the Court, Lydia _schemes_.

~*~

Scott and Stiles take a roundabout route through the Court grounds, skulking past large groups of fae as they go, attempting not to draw too much attention to themselves.  All for nothing; by the time they reach the safety of the private rooms, Stiles’s father is seated casually on the chaise lounge.  “Boys.”

They freeze.  Their hands are bright blue, blue hand prints show all over their clothes where they’d pushed at each other as they fled.  There’s a streak of it across Scott’s forehead and Stiles has fingerprints along his jawline.  “Father,” Stiles says eventually, striving for easy surprise but really only managing to come off as choked.  He clears his throat.  “Uh... I mean, how are you?  It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

“Stiles, I saw you last night at dinner.”

“That could classify as ‘awhile’.  Can’t it, Scott?”

Scott looks like he wants to swallow his tongue.  Or bolt.  Or maybe both.  He’s never been as comfortable in front of the line of fire as Stiles. Especially when faced with the stern stare of the Peacekeeper of the Court.  Stiles isn’t sure why. It’s not as if he hasn’t had plenty of time to get used to it.

His father leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees.  “Boys, I thought we were past this.”  His gaze, calm and clear as a midnight sky, all but pins them to the door.  Scott gulps.  Stiles fights not to do the same.  He loves his father and they get along very well, but they’re so close that he often forgets just how dangerous of a fae the Peacekeeper of the Court could be when you had his full attention.  “This is not a good time to be riling up the fae.  Especially you, Stiles.”

Stiles suppresses a grimace.  He doesn’t have to be fae for him to know the truth when he hears it.  He is constantly on the edge as it is, and this new stunt won’t put him in favour of anyone.  The Peacekeeper will have to work doubly hard to fix this, and his stomach tightens a little with guilt.  “I’m sorry,” he says finally, and he is.  But he doesn’t regret it entirely, because now he’ll always have the memory of the shock of the recently-dyed fae and another adventure with Scott, and he can’t regret that.

His father knows it, and sighs. “Stiles—“

It was starting to look like a long and potentially uncomfortable rehash of all the reasons he was in this position to begin with had a knock not interrupted them.  “Stiles, are you in there?  I want you to—“  The door swings open revealing Lydia in a travel outfit,  all green and brown and close-fitting enough to make anyone unsure as to where to look first.  Her long hair is pinned high and away from her eyes, and she looks ready for trouble with her long, slender knife strapped to her thigh.  Her eyebrows rise as she takes in the blue streaks and the long-suffering Peacekeeper sitting across the room.  “Am I interrupting something?”

“Oh god, yes and thank you,” Stiles says, pulling the door open wider.   “Did you need me for something?  Please say you’ll need me for something.”

“Sir,” Lydia says to the Peacekeeper, ignoring Stiles entirely as she bows.  “I was wondering if I could borrow your son for a few hours.  I have an errand to run and I’d like someone to accompany me.”

There’s a long pause.  The Peacekeeper looks first at Scott, then rests his gaze on Stiles, who does everything he possibly can to silently plead for permission.  “All right,” he says, and his son throws his hands up in the air in victory.  “It’s probably best he gets away from here for the moment anyway.  This is not over.”  Stiles looks properly abashed.  “We’re going to discuss this at length upon your return.  This is _important_ , Stiles.”  So saying, he rises to his feet and leaves, snagging Scott by the collar as he goes and promising that there were quite a few dishes to be done in the kitchens, and wouldn’t you know it but he’d just found himself a volunteer.

Stiles turns to Lydia and is promptly hit in the face with a rag procured from who knew where.  “Clean yourself up and put on some decent clothes,” she says.  “You look like you got in a fight with a magicked blueberry and lost.”

He scrubs at his face and heads for the wardrobe.  Lydia pointedly turns her back.  “What are we doing, exactly?  And why do you look like you’re about to ride into battle?”

Lydia snorts.  “This isn’t battle-gear, Stiles.  This is called being cautious and prepared.  You’re the one always talking about ‘caution’, aren’t you?  Practice what you preach.”  Stiles resists the urge to throw his shirt at her.  “What _is_ this blue stuff, anyway?”

“Don’t touch it,” he says, pulling on clothes as fast as he can.  “It’ll dye whatever it touches, and I left the rest of the cleaner with Scott.  I found the recipe for it in the library, and I thought it would be fun to play with.” 

He doesn’t mention how frustrated he’s been after searching through everything the library had to offer on lycans, and she doesn’t mention how he’d sulked for more than a week after he’d been forced to give up.  There are some things they are willing to give each other with no comment.  “That sounds like a brilliant plan, Stiles,” she says instead.  There’s enough sarcasm in her tone to bury a small village.

“Don’t start,” he says, tugging a fresh shirt over his head {he thinks it’s fresh, and it doesn’t smell funny, so that’s _something_ , right?}.  “I’m going to get it from my father when we get back anyway, and I thought you were here to rescue me from a lecture, not give it to me from two different angles.”  A beat, and then he shudders.  “Forget I said that.  Forget I even mentioned it.  Let’s go.”

Much to her credit, Lydia doesn’t say anything about this either, and Stiles follows her in a pathetically grateful haze all the way past the farthest sentries and down the ley lines.  That gratefulness lasts about as long as it takes for her to wrap a delicate hand around his wrist and _pull_ , shifting them away from the Faerie Realm and into the buzzing hum of the mortal world.

“Lydia,” he says, blinking at the familiar wreck of a house in front of them, “What in the hells?”

Her smile would put a cat to shame.  “Close.  His family name is Hale.”

Stiles stares.  “What.”

“His family name is Hale.  Ossorian descent, probably. The house burned perhaps five years ago, maybe six.  Almost all of the family were lycanthropes, born ones instead of bitten.  He spent some time away, but came back because his sister died recently.  Killed, I think.  No accident.”

 “ _How_ —“

She reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder.  “Stiles, sometimes the best questions are left unanswered.”  And then, as he opens his mouth to tell her exactly why she is wrong, she lifts her hand and sends a pulse of magic at the house.

The lycan, Hale, is out the door in scant seconds, bristling all over in irritation and anti-socialism.  He comes to a halt at the edge of the porch and stands, solid and broad as a wall.  Confident in his invisibility, Stiles allows himself a long look at all of that coiled strength.  Fae tend toward the deceptively slender, most of their strength coming from hidden wells of magic.  It was a different thing to see such obvious power out on display.  And not, he admits to himself, a bad kind of different.

“I thought that I told you to leave.”  Hale’s voice is steady, but there’s an undercurrent of outright hostility that has Stiles narrowing his eyes.  He’s never gone in much for instant retribution over slights {he prefers to plot and humiliate subtly}, but this rubs him in all the wrong ways.  Hale seems to realize how his words could have been taken, because he raises his hands and, with an obvious effort, says, “I just ask that you leave me alone.  Nothing else.” A pause, and then, “Please.”

Stiles settles, more amused than he should be over the way the ‘please’ had sounded so forced.  And then he tenses right back up as Lydia steps forward and wills herself visible.  The lycan spots her instantly.  His eyes flare blue and the veins along his forearms rise as his fingers clench.

“I don’t want anything from you,” she says, raising her hands well away from the knife strapped to her thigh.  The gesture is nice, but Stiles knows that she’s more than capable of defending herself with just her bare hands if need be{and the lycan knows too, if the tension in the area is anything to go by}.   “I just want to talk.”

“That means you want something from me,” Hale says, not budging.  “I know about your word games.  Why have you been following me?”

Lydia doesn’t move, but the tension in the air more than doubles as she bristles with magic at the insinuation.  Stiles doesn’t know how much more of the tension he can take.  There’s only so much he can do with all of this energy sparking around.  “I wasn’t following you earlier this season,” she says eventually.  “That was someone else.”

“The Sluagh?”

Stiles’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.  Lydia’s snap down over her brilliant green eyes.  “Do I look like someone who would consort with the likes of the Host?”  A prudent mortal would have stepped back.  Hale just raises his hands and inclines his head.  Prudence apparently doesn’t run in his system.

Traditionally, a full bow and a vocal apology would have been better, especially for such an insult, but Lydia is willing to let it slide for the moment {although Stiles knows that the insult is far from forgotten} in the interest of accomplishing her goal.  She reaches back, takes Stiles’s wrist in hand, and wills him into visibility as well.  Stiles feels more than a little betrayed.  “I know he’s a little less than typical, but does he look like a member of the Sluagh?”

There’s a long moment of silence, and he’s just about decided that yes, he feels insulted as well, before Hale slowly unclenches his hands.  “He was the one following me?”

“Yes, ‘he’ was,” Stiles snaps, barely able to keep from spreading his hands wide in a ‘what are you going to do about it’ gesture.  He’s not sure he likes how the lycan is eyeing him.

Hale’s eyes fade from that bright blue back into clear hazel.  There’s a hint of hope in the line of his shoulders.  When he speaks again, the words are hesitant, still mistrustful.  “You aren’t of the Unseelie Court?”

“No,” he says.  “We are Daoine Sidhe.  We have better things to do than run around cursing people.”

“Like dying members of the Court blue?” Lydia says out of the corner of her mouth and Stiles can’t just let that slide so he rattles off a quick reminder about how misappropriating the library to do certain things with Jackson probably isn’t the best use of time resources either. The faintest blush appears high on her cheeks and he’s congratulating himself before he remembers that they have an audience.  A very attractive audience, and Lydia has infinitely more blackmail material on him than he does on her.

Hale only looks slightly more convinced, but he’s no longer glaring quite so much.  Stiles takes this as a win.  “Hello,” he says, halving the distance between them.  “My name is Stiles.  This is my friend, Lydia.”  Belatedly, he remembers they do things differently here in the mortal realm, and holds out his left hand to shake.

The werewolf stares at the hand as if it might bite him {ha! Stiles thinks giddily}, but apparently decides that the risk of offense is greater than just shaking a hand.  He descends the steps, moving slow and deliberate and somehow predatory, and that thrill of anticipation shoots up Stiles’s spine.  He’s in no danger, he knows Hale doesn’t have a chance of even touching him if Stiles doesn’t want him to, but there’s something in the movement that makes his breath catch in the back of his throat.  And when the lycan’s hand closes around his own, strong and steady despite his obvious tension, Stiles can’t help but sigh and think to himself that he is so fucked.

“Derek Hale.”

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Equilux: When sunset is exactly twelve hours after sunrise._   
> 
> 
> This was originally written last year for the Teen Wolf Holiday Exchange, wherein I wrote the whole thing out in about two weeks and then realized I could do _~so much more~_ with it. {And then I left it sitting in a folder on my laptop for eleven months, but we're not going to talk about that.} So, this fic is technically complete, but needs a bit of revision before it can be posted in its full, terrifying, 30k+ glory. I'd like to get a new chapter up every couple weeks, which means I'll probably be doing lots of whining and babbling in the tags over on [tumblr](http://perianfrost.tumblr.com).


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